I started at the bench. A BSc in Biotechnology at UCL, with a placement year in protein chemistry at Roche in Basel, folding and purifying proteins by hand. I liked the work and kept wanting to ask questions the lab wasn't set up to answer: what these molecules mean to the people who will live with them, and who gets to decide.
So I went to the Royal College of Art and did an MA in Design Interactions under Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. That's where the two halves fused. The dissertation, in 2011, was on the human microbiome, and the projects that followed toured to Science Gallery Dublin, Z33, the V&A and the Saint-Étienne Biennale.
Between the RCA and the PhD I ran a lab. A year as lab manager and research assistant in Jake Baum's malaria group at Imperial College taught me more about biosafety, procurement and keeping other people's experiments running than any course could.
The PhD is in Media and Arts Technology, from Queen Mary University of London, awarded in October 2020. It put living microbes inside computer games and measured what happened to the players. One of those papers picked up an Exceptional Paper Honourable Mention at FDG 2020, and the games ran at Somerset House and during London Design Festival.
Then two years as a postdoctoral researcher in the Materials Experience Lab at TU Delft with Elvin Karana, on the EU-funded ELM project. We built a taxonomy for how living materials show their aliveness, co-wrote the Fundamentals of Biodesign and Designing Living Artefacts modules, and I supervised some very good students.
Since 2024 I've run the research on my own terms. I'm not a designer who reads biology, and I'm not a biologist who designs. My material is molecular and my method is design. Biodesign Academy is the practice that holds the teaching and the public work: courses, workshops, a newsletter and a members' community.
2024 Honourable Mention, What's Around Design (WAD 2024), Algarve, for Living Therapeutic Skin. First author of four.
2023 Honourable Mention, ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '23), for Cyano-chromic Interface. Second author of six.
2020 Exceptional Paper Honourable Mention, Foundations of Digital Games (FDG '20), for Working with Nature's Lag. First author of five.
2019 Try It Award, Queen Mary University of London Enterprise, for MouldCraft.
2015 Future of Money Design Award, Consult Hyperion, for Peck As You Go.
2014 Project Boost Grant, Imperial College Advanced Hackspace and EPSRC, for Biohack the Economy.
2013 Finalist, Bio Art & Design (BAD) Award, Netherlands.
PhD, Media and Arts Technology, Queen Mary University of London, 2020
MA Design Interactions, Royal College of Art, 2012
Foundation Diploma in Art and Design (Distinction), London College of Communication, UAL, 2010
BSc Biotechnology, University College London, 2005
Founder and Director, Biodesign Academy (Biodesign Academy Ltd, UK, and Biodesign Academy B.V., Netherlands)
Course architect and lead instructor, AI × Biodesign
Member, Working Group 3, COST Action CA24126 DESIGNAE
Registered expert, European Commission Funding & Tenders database
Judge, iGEM Grand Jamboree 2026, Paris
Visiting Scholar, University of Edinburgh, 2025 to 2026
Postdoctoral Researcher, Materials Experience Lab, TU Delft, 2022 to 2024
Visiting Lecturer, Royal College of Art, 2021 to 2022
Visiting Lecturer, Queen Mary University of London, 2021
Lab Manager and Research Assistant, Baum Lab, Imperial College London, 2014 to 2015
Visiting Lecturer, London College of Communication, 2013 to 2014
Co-lead, Working Group 3, COST Action CA24126 DESIGNAE, to February 2026
English, native. Korean, near-native, including translation work. French, school-level.
I write about materials, proteins, and the decisions people make around them. New work usually appears in the newsletter first.